


Arc-en-Ciel

by TheDarkFlygon



Series: Two is Better than One, Three is Better than Two (Polyamourous Stories) [4]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Adopted Children, Adoption, Art, Asexual Character, Bisexual Female Character, Canon Lesbian Relationship, Coming Out, Compromise, F/F, F/M, Flowers, Fluff, Gen, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Themes, Lesbian Character, Love, Multi, One Shot Collection, Original Character(s), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Female Character, POV Third Person, Painting, Polyamorous Character, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Pregnancy, Rating May Change, Scars, Sex Talk, Sibling Love, Sister-Sister Relationship, Threesome - F/F/M, Trans Female Character, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-20
Packaged: 2020-04-06 16:14:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 8,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19066132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkFlygon/pseuds/TheDarkFlygon
Summary: Pride-themed oneshots with my characters and original work, a little thing as I work on my first official novel. Its goals: celebrating LGBT+ identities, relationships, solidarities and feelings.Information (such as trigger/content warnings, summaries, etc.) are available in the beginning author's notes.





	1. Kunzite

**Author's Note:**

> SUMMARY:  
> -1: Kunzite - Charline & Corinne - Sisters, confessions and sibling love. (Gen, implied F/F, no TW/CW)  
> -2: Garnet - François/Sarah - A couple's discussion about sexual intercourse (or lack thereof). (T, F/M, talk of sex without anything explicit)  
> -3: Ruby - Louise/Magdalena - A welcome change in a family's daily life. (G, F/F, talk of adoption and pregnancy)  
> -4: Amber - Annabelle/Florian - A lover and her mission to make her loved one feel better about himself. (G/T, F/M, talk of scars and surgery)  
> -5: Citrine - François/Juliette/Sarah - A triad coming together and finding their sunlight. (T, F/F/M, talk of sexual matters)  
> -6: Emerald - Amandine - A product of nature admiring other products of nature. (G, no content warning apply)  
> -7: Turquoise - Raphaëlle - An aid of diversity through the use of art. (G, no content warning apply)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [LILAC - Sisterhood/Brotherhood]  
> Sisters being each other's accomplice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> plz ignore the fact I am one day late, I had stuff to do yesterday like buy pride merch and suffer through AFAB problems:tm:

“Big sis?”

Her sister’s shy voice made Charline’s head rise from her copybook. Hearing Corinne speak in such a quiet, almost fearful tone wasn’t usual to say the least: something had to be wrong, or at least bizarre and unusual.

“What is it?”

 

Charline closed her book as she turned towards her little sister, standing in the doorway, fumbling with her hands. It seemed like a conversation had to be had in this house, as soon as possible she’d even say.

“Hey, don’t be this timid, c’mon in!”

Corinne made her way into the room, hesitant footstep after hesitant footstep, still fumbling with her fingers as if her life depended on it. Her emerald eyes didn’t even dare stare at her sister’s.

“Take a seat on the bed, you look like your legs are gonna snap under your weight if you keep standing for much longer!”

 

In an eerie silence, Corinne did as she was told and sat down on the bed, legs against each other, arms crossed and squeezed against her chest. Feeling like there was a need for closeness, Charline rose from her desk and joined her sister.

“Okay, tell me what’s wrong. I promise I won’t tell the parents if you don’t want me to. You got a bad grade or something?”

“W-well, no… It’s something else…”

“What is it, then? I’m sure it’s not that bad!”

“I… I think I… like girls…”

 

Seeing her little sister say what she herself had so much troubles saying a few years back to their parents warmed her heart, despite the tone in which it was said and the obvious shame plastered all over the poor girl’s face, cheeks reddened and eyes darting across the room while never truly rising. From someone as confident and self-assured as thirteen-year-old Corinne, this was a weird sight to behold.

“B-but y’know, not in a friend way… Not like how I see Sassou… But, like, how you’re supposed to see boys, y’know? I… I don’t know how to phrase it…”

“Hey, Coco, it’s no big deal. You remember your big sis likes girls that way, right? I’ve introduced you to Lynda, haven’t I?”

“Y-yeah, but… There’s another issue…”

“Oh? What is it?”

 

Corinne looked aside, unable to face her own sibling once and for all. In that moment, Charline wondered if Léonie had her ear glued against the wall of her own room. She must have noticed them having this little secretive conversation, _right_? Léonie had always been a bit nosy, but she wasn’t a bad girl at all. She’d understand perfectly fine; or at least not mind, considering she was ten and perhaps not very aware of what was platonic love and what was romantic attraction.

“I… think I also like guys that way too…”

“I see, I see,” she couldn’t help but chuckle.

“W-what’s so funny…?”

“I just don’t know why you’re so afraid of telling me this when I’m myself bi!”

 

Her sister’s face lost its colours, then regained them in a bright shade of red. At that point, her expression had been dyed in astonishment.

“Oh, that’s… That’s right!” Corinne let out a hearty laugh, infectious and irresistible.  “I… actually kinda forgot…” She scratched the back of her head. “Oops.”

“Hey, happens to us all. At least Mom and Dad are gonna accept that without any hardship, that’s for sure.”

As the conversation came to a quiet, soothing close, Charline pulled Corinne against her. Nothing to be alarmed about…


	2. Garnet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [PINK - Sexuality]  
> Finding harmony where there are disagreements.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SaFran is back baby
> 
> The tone is especially raunchy and violent because, well, it's Sarah we're talking about. She's salty, she's violent in her words, she's open about everything and she likes to call herself a bitch. Everything is in her POV, so expect seeing some... distasteful language, to say the least.

“I’m sorry,” he told her as he pulled his knees against his arms, as if to hide his bare chest from her eyes.

 

Usually, considering her previous relationships, she’d have at least insisted. Not forced her partner to fuck her senseless on the desk of her classroom, obviously, but she’d have still tried to get it her way nonetheless. “You could always try and pull back if you don’t feel up to it,” she’d usually say. It never ended up going her way, but she’d have at least tried and could always feel some pride in escaping her forceful, controlling tendencies.

But, today, she didn’t feel like insisting.

 

When she began dating him, Sarah knew what she was getting herself into. The naïve newbie to the school, her uncle’s substitute then made durable by someone else leaving the team, couldn’t have been as versed in sexuality as she was. She couldn’t deny having a high sex drive, making herself feel like a nymphomaniac at times. Perhaps “hypersexual” was the right word she was searching for. She didn’t have problems taking care of that alone or in open, consenting relationships with friends she had benefits with, sometimes letting herself get a one-night stand because lonely, horny people always find a way to get to each other and try quenching their solitude together.

 

Thing was, she was also used to dating guys and gals who had this high sex drive to compete with hers. Her aggressive flirting methods may have been what had done the trick for her. She was the kind to respond to advances with sexual innuendos, more or less disguised, the closer she was to a potential suitor the clearer they’d get. She hadn’t always dated with sex in mind, more with figuring out her sexuality, then discovering her partners.

However, her favourite method of discovering who she was dating at some point in time was to share an intimate moment with them under the covers (well, in theory). Exploring their body with curiosity. Spotting the “imperfections” in the skin that she’d usually end up making a bonus feature. Tasting their reactions when prompted about different things, in different ways. Seeing how far they could go together. That was what she loved the most in relationships: the private, if not promiscuous, sometimes hot and sometimes awkward side of being a couple.

 

But François didn’t share that mindset, and she knew it very well.

 

Fran was… her polar opposite, in a way. He wasn’t meek nor introverted, considering he always looked like a smiling fool with too much free time on his hands and too many smiles to give away to people who didn’t quite deserve them, but he was to love and sexual life what she was to shutting the fuck up about anything ever.

He was a peaceful spirit, never too forward, albeit foolishly honest. He didn’t dare taking the decisions for someone else, always asking for her opinions on anything when she’d have just butted in. He wasn’t the kind to flirt, nor embarrass on purpose (second-hand embarrassment, on the other hand…). It didn’t mean he didn’t know what a sexual innuendo was when he’d see or hear one, of course; but it meant he clearly wasn’t pursuing any romantic relationship whatsoever on his own and by his own volition.

 

How they had come to dating was a bit cheesy, if she had to be honest. Fran was by far one of the most popular teachers of their school for a good reason: he was kind, smiling and overall adorable (she had to admit it to herself: he was too cute for his own good); and all that while looking handsome when he was making class. He was, in short, the perfect husband, the ideal son-in-law, the fabled good man girls always seemed to seek in chick-flicks and popular, low-grade romance books, serving as the opposite side of the cliché coin to the bad boy.

In short, he was what Sarah _absolutely despised_.

 

François was cheesy and smiled way too much. He was too nice, too passive, too friendly. He didn’t take chances, didn’t say anything vulgar unless it was spontaneous (the day she discovered he was actually a natural swearer had rendered her _speechless_ ), never stepped out of his boundaries unless it was a mistake. He was too much of a goody-two-shoes for her, the loud-mouthed bitch who never shut up about anything, hot-headed to a default, stubborn and unbearable.

Only for her to fall in love with him without realizing it.

 

It wasn’t that Sarah hadn’t dated nice people before. She had dated, during her teenage years, her dearest friend Corinne. She had dated Juliette, now a close classmate she enjoyed bickering with for a yes or a no (and trying to quench her thirst for her now that the latter was dating and pregnant, only made sense for her to recognize she hadn’t been “the one”). She had dated Nathan, her first love, before he had realized he wasn’t that into girls all things considered.

Falling in love with François shouldn’t have, as such, come to much of a surprise. She liked her partners to be rough when they knew it was all words and no intention, to be wild in bed and try so many kinky stuff to the point she herself couldn’t tell if it was actually something they were into or if they had just decided to try the weirdest thing they had come across online during the week; but she also liked them to be kind, well-meaning and thoughtful. It was kind of a hypocritical thing to wish for when she herself was abrasive, but she also didn’t think of herself as an abusive partner or anyone truly despicable. She was a bitch, sure, but she was a loving bitch: she’d protect her loved ones until the end of times, make them as happy as she could, make them tender sweet love if that was what they wanted. She could be a nice girlfriend; she’d let you know.

Yet, she was taken aback when she realized her uncle’s substitute had stolen her heart by paying her coffees she had never asked for (he had even thought of remembering what she picked the most at the machine, for fuck’s sake!), by providing her with smiles and kind gestures and words whether or not she needed those or not, by listening to her pointless ranting about the latest twist in that one stupid cooking show she was way too seriously involved in. He didn’t understand a single thing about it, she knew it, but he’d still listen and try coming up with anything to say on the matter. It more often than not fell flat right on its face, but he was trying, and she was appreciative of it.

 

Anyway. It had been a mess for them to get together, as it happened almost on their colleagues’ whim (Juliette and Raphaëlle were perhaps tired of watching them stare at each other without ever saying what they really thought about each other); but from them on, it had snowballed to the situation they were trapped in. They were at her place, on a nice, chill evening, enjoying each other without anyone to judge them in public and whatnot. No students to recognize them, no rumours to be spread about them due to indiscreet eyes and paparazzo wannabes, just them and her place. It had, of course, escalated to them finding their way into her bedroom, her double-sized bed and discussing about books (of course, Fran was a prestigious Sorbonne graduate in Classic Literature, what did she expect? To talk about the latest season of her latest series obsession?).

The issue lied in what happened afterwards. They both understood it’d be the ideal time to get it on: she was on the pill (and had a secret stash of condoms under her bed anyway), they were alone together, and they were in the mood to cuddle against each other. They had even striped down to their basic underwear, to the point she was about to teach him how to undo her bra (there was no way he knew how to do that: she was his teacher there, and they hadn’t gone over that lesson yet). The problem wasn’t in the lack of consent or anything: it was that Fran had the tiniest sexual drive she had ever witnessed in her life and simply couldn’t get into it.

 

“I’m sorry,” he told her as he pulled his knees against his arms, as if to hide his bare chest from her eyes.

Sarah stood there, the warmth of the embrace leaving her skin like the wind leaves through a window left wide open, thinking of what to do. Did she want to get it on and offer him the best first time she could give to someone? Of course. Did she still find him hot when he was embarrassed and trying to hide himself away? Obviously. Did she want to force him to do her bidding and satisfy her animalistic need for sexual gratification? Absolutely not. She was a needy and capricious asshole, not a monster.

“What have I told you about apologizing? Fucking stop.”

 

He stared at her, dumbfounded, his glasses almost falling off his nose.

“Y-yeah, I know, but…”

“No but. We’ve gone over this already, I told you it was fine to refuse my advances. You’ve told me about your sex drive and lack of attraction. It’s _fine_ , François.”

She had to show some hardness if she wanted the damn message to go through his thick skull.

“However, if you don’t stop apologizing like a little kid who’s been caught stealing cookies, that won’t be okay and I’ll seriously take offense. Stop. Apologizing.”

He gulped his saliva down, then emitted a tiny laugh.

“I… I’m gonna try. I just hope you’re… not mad at me.”

“If I was mad and only about the damn hot sex I want, need and deserve, I’d have broken up with you already, you moron.”

 

She pressed his lips against her, not waiting for a reply she knew would just be him digging his grave into more and more apologies.

“I love you, not sex, y’know.”

His glasses having fallen off the bridge of his nose, he focused his eyes on her, red splattered all over his cheeks.

“I… love you too…”

“That’s more like it.”

She kissed him again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those who wonder why this, to me, fits Pride Month prompts:  
> -Sarah is, as is implied here, bisexual and (very) proud of that fact. Obviously, the fact she's a very sexual person isn't linked to her sexual orientation: she's just bi *and* very sexual. (For "calmer" bisexual characters of mine, you've seen Corinne and Charline before, and you'll probably soon meet Raphaëlle and Juliette S.)  
> -François is heteromantic asexual. While I know this is kind of "questionable" in terms of "LGBT+ness", I think he has his place there. 
> 
> Miscealleneous information:  
> -The Juliette mentioned in the story is Juliette Jonquille (not Soissons, the one I alluded to before) is there dating two women, named Clémence and Amandine. There's probably going to be a story about them later this month, because Juliette/Clém/Amandine and Sarah/François happen in the very same AU/alternate canon, the Safronverse.


	3. Ruby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [RED - Life]  
> A new, welcome change of pace in Magdalena and Louise's life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I struggled a lot, and I mean a *lot*, with this one. I had other ideas (like Clémence/Amandine and a family reunion), but none of them worked out. I went several days with my only productivity being doodling bad fetish porn to pass the time. Lately, though, and now that my stupid exams are behind me and that I'm soon entering a master's degree (in the Sorbonne no less lmao), my muse is back for more of my novel and, in the meantime, more of this!
> 
> Magda and Louise are a canon lesbian couple from my original verse, which is different from Sarah and François who are more like a crack OTP of mine lmao. (But is it really crack if you can make it canon with a snap of the fingers?), and which also makes them super fun to write about! They're usually shoved in the background while I talk about another LGBT+ couple of this universe, namely Annabelle and Florian (they're a heterosexual couple but they're still LGBT+, believe me, you'll see next time on Arc-en-Ciel
> 
> I've also never written an adopted family like this so this is probably saccharine garbage, woops  
> It's also a bit more saccharine and scifi-ey than my usual original work, but hey, sometimes you gotta be self-indulgent to yourself and indulge in some less complex and gritty stuff for your mental health's sake, right?

To her upmost happiness, Magdalena had a tranquil life with what she’d consider her found, wanted family: her older sister Sonia, her wife Louise, their best friend Annabelle, their other close friends and their adopted teenage daughter, Jasmine. It had been quite the ride to get there, many shallow shores and dire waters, but they had arrived there, and she couldn’t have been much more grateful than that for it.

And yet, their life was about to change all over again.

 

It had changed a few times before, sometimes drastically. She had cut her own parents from her life because of their unacceptance of her sexuality, wanting her to marry a good man, but all she had ended up doing was falling head over heels for Louise when she was in her second year of college. There had been regrets back in the day, until they weren’t anymore: things had never been better that way, as her studies had managed to pay for her needs and she still had a girlfriend, a bunch of friends, and a scapegoat in the person of Florian, Annabelle’s boyfriend. Paris times were smooth.

Jasmine had changed their lives too. Louise and Magdalena had wanted to adopt a child rather than try and conceive something, thinking kids shouldn’t be parentless and that they were perfectly capable of handling an abandoned soul.

 

It had been a hassle to go through conditions, paperwork and regulations, but eventually Jasmine, eight-year-old orphan of roadkill parents, officially became their child. Despite life giving her such sour lemons, she was a peppy kid with creativity flowing, hands full of drawings made either to vent or escape reality, taking therapy well, obedient and brave, eyes shining whenever she’d see her adopting mothers.

Had it been weird for her to adapt to new parents after two years of orphanage life? Obviously. They had however all taken the change patiently and with as much care as possible, making sure she never felt too brutally thrown into the flow of things, assuring themselves that she never felt alienated nor unwanted. She had become their crown jewel, the shine of their married life; and, to that, Magdalena could have never been more grateful.

 

One thing that hadn’t changed in Jasmine’s life was her status as an only child. Before the tragic fate of her biological parents, she didn’t have any siblings, suffering a deal of loneliness from middle-class parents struggling to pay the bills at the end of the month while offering their child a comfortable enough life. She hadn’t seen them much either, which had perhaps caused her to be so happy about Magdalena and Louise being mostly home or near it, coming back at stable hours in their little house in Paris.

And now that they were this happy family of three, with Jasmine having recently turned thirteen, a new change arose.

 

Science had made progress since they had welcomed Jasmine into their open arms for the first time. Society had also made this progress, matching more and more the possibilities human-made tools and methods gave them. Daring and quite rich, Magdalena and Louise gave it a go, let themselves take the chance that it could succeed like it could fail horribly. What did they lose when trying this anyway? They had the money, they had a large-enough house, and Jasmine looked like she’d want siblings now that she was old enough to take care of them herself (if she wanted) and have the patience to bear a crying baby for a while.

Did Magdalena really believe it’d work? Not really, she wasn’t that delusional. Did she want to believe that it could work? For all the people like Louise and her who truly, desperately wanted a child of their own, she wanted to believe it could, at least, eventually work one day, sooner or later, making a dream come true to so many people. (She also thought of her good pal Anna, who had similar troubles in her couple…).

 

Somehow, it had worked. As it stood, Magdalena was right at this moment looking at her wife and daughter discussing a book together, sharing a moment in the garden while she, for once, calmly watched over them. She felt serene, for the first times in what had felt like forever, despite being in a condition that she had previously thought would send her in a havoc every time she felt activity from the inside. Instead, she had a hand put on a temporary bump, almost checking for this activity she dreaded to feel before.

Life could be smooth and gentle at times, protecting and nurturing instead of threatening to take the lives of the ones she loved back. Where had stood fear and sorrow a couple of years prior, now stood harmony, serenity and a hope for a brighter future for her, her family, and the life that was to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing about pregnancy still makes me strangely awkward, rip me


	4. Amber

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [ORANGE - Healing]  
> Finding comfort in the leftovers of healing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: multiple mentions and talk of scars and surgery.
> 
> Hello yes Annabelle and Florian are my favorite OC couple and it shows because I write either uber fluff or whumpy angst of them.  
> Or both at the same time.  
> Yes, I can do that.
> 
> I also wanted to make it more about healing and stuff but it became uber fluff and I rolled with it so, here you go  
> fluff where everything is implied because your truly's is a sappy fuck

It was quite the unusual sight for Annabelle to see her boyfriend stare at himself in the mirror, he who spent some of his time avoiding his own reflect because, deep down and unknown to most people, he found himself quite repulsive to look at. Nobody else had ever thought that about him, she was deeply sure of that, but words seemed to have never worked on his self-esteem. Would that ever change? She very much hoped so.

However, there was an obvious reason as to why he was staring at his image in the mirror this intensely. He didn’t seem to happy about this reflect, considering the frown slowly appearing on his face. While she had her own idea as to why he looked so regretful, Annabelle couldn’t stand not doing anything about it: it was her mission to make her loved one feel happy and content with himself.

 

Without a loud step, but with a forewarning, she entered their bathroom, where Florian stood in front of the mirror, hands on his bare abdomen, eyes fixated on the reflection. His attention caught by the sudden noise, he turned his head to her, gave her a shy and slightly malformed smile, and went back to staring at himself.

“I didn’t see you coming, Annie,” he told her as he tried to look more positive, she’d have guessed.

“My fault here, I should have knocked before coming.”

“You say that as if I hadn’t left the door open.”

 

He snickered at his own response, before returning to sulking.

“What’s wrong, honey? You seem bothered with something,” she asked him, mellow voice out. There was only talking to him with soft-spoken words whenever he felt unworthy. With that knowledge, she could only take the sweet-scented route…

As she asked, he took off his left hand from a recent scar, its tissue still risen compared to the rest of his skin, still reddened.

“…I’ve got a new scar, yet again. That’s what bothering me.”

“How so? It’s just a scar, it doesn’t change anything about you.”

“I think I may be starting to get too much of those…”

 

Perplexed, Annabelle observed in silence all the little defaults in his skin. Along with that recent abdominal scar was another, more on the middle of his midriff, still in the process of vanishing from sight. Her eyes rose, giving place to the two crescent-shaped lines on his chest, right under his pectoral muscles. None of them seemed too much or out of place to her: they all had their meaning, all said something about his past experiences, all represented a step in his life journey, all symbolized a memory.

She knew he found these ugly because he thought she’d find them despicable. Honestly, Annabelle didn’t mind in the slightest: as far as she knew, her own brother, Eudes, had more scars than Florian did, due to being quite the reckless, hot-headed boy when he had been a child. Almost everyone in her family had to have gone through the surgery Florian had been through recently. Yet, none of them were ugly to her, or to anyone: it didn’t change who he was, or what she loved so much in him. For someone so deep down the rabbit hole of intellects, he was extremely self-conscious of his physique at times…

 

“Only one of these scars means something akin to harming yourself, honey. I don’t see why you should be so sullen about them. You’re handsome either way, don’t let these little physical flaws get to you this badly.”

“I don’t know what to make of them,” he replied as he traced the most recent one, a leftover from a peritonitis surgery which had happened merely a week before. “That one isn’t even the worse, it’s just a thing that’d have eventually happened… well, if you exclude the fact I should have gotten _that_ checked on sooner, but I think we don’t need to go over that again…”

“We do not.”

 

He then traced over the crescents on his chest with a hesitating finger, as if he was discovering these scars again. He had always seemed to do, to her, even if it had been a couple years since they had first appeared. They weren’t even this visible anymore, having mostly faded, leaving only these very thin lines she had known to be bigger.

“I still wonder, to this day, how you’ve gotten over these. They’re obnoxious to look at.”

“I believe I’ve already told you many, many times, Florian. I don’t think so. I even quite like them, if I can say so myself.”

“How come?”

 

He looked bewildered, from what she could see on the reflection in the mirror, but she simply smiled, sneaked behind his back and traced them with her own fingers, compensating for their height difference by rising herself on her toes.

“They’re battle scars. They’re the symbol of what you’ve gone through, just like this one (she glided her finger along the one in the middle) represents your victory over society’s rejection and surviving an incredibly surgical ordeal. Even this one, (she traced over the peritonitis scar), means something. It means that you’ve been a very serious teacher, but that you also need to pay more attention to your health!”

She put her hands on his chest scars, knowing their location by heart. He slightly jerked under her touch, the light snicker escaping his mouth telling her she had touched a ticklish part of his body.

“I can’t speak for you, I know, but I think you’re beautiful with or without scars. I’d have nothing else but you like you are right now.”

 

Florian finally smiled, cocking his head backwards before staring in the mirror again, putting his hands over hers. The red on his cheeks would always betray his embarrassment, but she had gotten him to smile at last, that had been her goal all along.

“It’s not that bad, when I listen to you speak about them. I don’t know how you do that.”

“Rhetoric.”

He laughed.

“You know it has nothing to do with language.”

 

She kissed him on the cheek instead of properly responding.

“I told you… Nothing to do with language. You’re a witch.”

“A good witch, then?”

“The best witch.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Annabelle is like the ultimate ally because she has a bisexual brother, lesbian best friends and a trans husband  
> she's kind of legally obligated to defend them and fight their enemies in the pit with *facts* and *logic* because she's non-violent


	5. Citrine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [YELLOW - Sunlight]  
> A trio finds summer after the harsh winter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brief content list: polyamory, mentions/talk of sexual matters (nothing explicit, but there are some direct mentions, I don't think they make this story worth a M-rating though)
> 
> I can only blame myself for giving myself Pride Flag stripe meanings as prompts, but geez was this one super vague and weird to work with. "Sunlight" is a pretty thing, a pretty word and a pretty meaning, but it takes you a while to come up with something of subtance lmao.
> 
> SaFranJul is the guilty pleasure of my OC guilty pleasures. It makes no canonical sense, is gratuitous because I can't decide if I'd ship Sarah with Juliette or François, and it's because I have a thing for F/F/M ships.  
> It's in Sarah's POV again because huh... it'd have made less sense from Juliette or François's POVs. Much less sense.
> 
> I'm still probably going to end up writing about SaJul for Pride Month because they're a canon Sapphic couple, though. It's only fair to give them a true chance to shine.

In older cultures, sunlight was associated with hope and the good days, the ones which the sun would choose to bathe in its warmth without scorching it beyond saving and nourish with its clarity, dissolving the menacing shadows of cold and death. Summer was its time bastion, the yearly time where the sun shone for twelve hours at the very least, blessing the people who knew not to overexpose themselves to a good that could quickly turn into a detriment to unconscious, reckless people.

And, to Sarah, they had finally found their own sunlight after the dark of the stone-cold winter.

 

The troubles had started back in middle school. As the hormonal teenager she was at the time, Sarah was discovering what sexuality was, questioning herself and her feelings every step of the way. Was it normal to want to kiss Antoine when the teacher would have his back turned on them? Was it normal to want to slip her hands under Corinne’s sweater and get a touch for what she could only guess were her soft breasts? Was it normal to think about it often, to feel this weird but this good whenever she’d have all these dirty, unreligious thoughts? Sixteen-year-old Sarah had without a doubt been confused with the sudden flood of new feelings hitting her, but twenty-eight-year-old Sarah knew much better than that because she had had the time to process everything.

There were words to designate what she felt. She was easily aroused, she expressed sexual desire in conventionally attractive people she’d either find cute or hot (or both), she felt these in her mind and her flesh, skin burning with the desires she had grown accustomed to. Her first crushes: Antoine, the nice dude she had technology classes to go through with, and Corinne, her recently-moved-to-the-city neighbour in most classes who was just drop-dead gorgeous (and had only grown even more beautiful since then, holy smoke was she still hot). She had never made her feelings known to them, but had treasured them and transformed them into a deep respect and friendship.

 

Sarah had known she was bisexual before she had even known what the word meant, but her true awakening to her desires had been this girl from high school named Juliette. Medium-tone skin, coffee brown eyes, obvious makeup skills to enlighten her own face, soft-looking chest, sassy yet good-natured: she was the ideal girlfriend to a teenage Sarah, blinded by physical beauty and seduced by wits. They were classmates, then they were friends, and they ended together, fingers enlacing without them noticing, kisses exchanged in the back of society.

Barely anyone knew about what was supposed to be their dirty little secret. It mostly was their common friends: Clém, Corinne, Antoine. Classmates sometimes knew, but their judgement didn’t matter much to her, or anyone else for that matter. Too engrossed in each other to really pay attention to their surroundings, they quickly found themselves under the fires of rejection, the clouds obscuring their young sun. However, the weather changed often, rain and sunlight mixing with each other, blue and grey skies fusing together until they were a blur.

Their love and relationship survived high school, yet it almost broke when they entered college.

 

Sarah and Juliette, both artificial orphans of neglectful or unaccepting parents, occupied one of Sarah’s father’s flats without his knowledge, money having long-since replaced caution and attention, during their studies. Living together meant they kept noticing the other’s flaws, physical and personal: a scar here, a snappy remark there, tendencies and pet peeves conflicting with each other; yet they sailed on, because college was a fun time, because life was short and they needed to profit from it until they wouldn’t be able to, and they just loved each other too much to let go of the rope now.

College also came with its pros. Nobody gave two cents about their relationship, about them holding hands in the corridors or fingering each other in a stall of the girls’ bathroom whenever these were empty or almost deserted. There were too many things to do and so little time to give a damn about everything that everyone had simply given up on judging them, on trying to emit an opinion about two persons they didn’t even know the names of. She liked anonymity: the sun was blazing their skin, giving them spots of sunburns, and Juliette’s eyes glowed like gemstones. They were together and it was all that mattered.

 

But then, _he_ came in.

 

Because classes took so little time and because they needed money to support each other, both of them worked outside of college. While Juliette simply worked in a supermarket as a cashier, Sarah worked as a barista in a coffeeshop on the campus, serving cups of hot brews on the evenings and sometimes mornings or afternoons, looking at the pretty people coming in and declining giving her phone number to some of them because she was taken and in love.

Yet, as soon as she took the order of a guy from the _other_ literature major class she wasn’t a part of, Sarah almost dropped the cup of coffee she was serving him. And what a picture made her hands open without her realizing it: a tall, jade-eyed guy with messy chocolate hair and an unshaved beard, glasses on the edge of his nose bridge, wearing a button-up shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows (just like she liked them on herself), clumsily searching through his stuff to find some coins.

The bright smile he gave her as he put the money in her palm stole her away before she could do anything about it.

 

Entranced, bewitched, Sarah immediately tried to get more information on who this guy was, aside from the fact he was a literature major with another specialty. She started spotting him everywhere, even as she held Juliette’s hand and got kissed in the neck against a wall: the library, the halls, the parking lot, the campus, anywhere she went her eyes would be searching for him.

Through a few people she knew, including Corinne’s boyfriend Rémy (who was older than them, but in the same major, and a dude she’d have also imagined herself dating if Corinne hadn’t been with him; but she also saw herself dating _her_ , so maybe she’d just date them both, it’d be really neat…), she started gathering more and more information on this dude who had just so happened to have stolen her affection away.

His name was François. François Bannaire, to be more exact, a straight A student who kept getting into trouble because he wanted to help everyone. Naïve, almost gullible to a fault. Didn’t sleep much. Could usually be seen hanging around the college’s library, either for his homework or just to read some books he was curious about. His favourite author was, at the time, Gide (she wrote that on a sticky note somewhere in her room). Lived around the campus, on his own. Clumsy, described as goofy and sometimes out of this world, but always polite and nice. A real goody-two-shoes, the kind of guys she found boring on sight usually, but there was something about him that was… different.

 

Eventually, Sarah made her move. She started memorizing when his classes ended, when he’d usually come by the coffee shop to pick something up, preparing some conversation topics, usually following the flow of whatever he was babbling about. His eyes were always shimmery, bright about something, a thing she didn’t know but swore she’d find what (she’d have never guessed), would it be rambling about Stendhal or listening to her pointlessly rant about the latest plot twist in some B-series she was watching after work.

Yet, there was something wrong with her and her way to see it. She was completely falling in love with this dude, she knew it, considering she couldn’t stop thinking about him whenever she’d open a book, serve coffee or even just attempt to sleep; but she still didn’t see herself without Juliette, without holding her close, without kissing her and making her sweet love until the end of times. She needed both at the same time, for different reasons, with similar feelings. Was it normal to be in love with two persons at once? Probably not. Was it socially acceptable? More than likely, the opposite way around.

Did she give a shit? Unless it hurt either of them, no.

 

But then started the everlasting winter night, filled with hail-heavy clouds and a grey sky with no trace of sun to be seen. Sarah knew Juliette would hate the idea to having to share her girlfriend with someone else, especially a guy she’d never be attracted to. After a couple years of dating and being financially co-dependent on each other, it seemed very difficult for her to admit to Juliette’s face about having fallen for another person, yet remaining madly in love with her.

The drink spilled when Juliette eventually popped the question herself: “Tell me something, Sarah, seriously and honestly. Are you up to something with this dude you keep seeing?”. Unable to lie, the truth poured from her lips like scalding coffee out of a leaking machine: yes, she was in love with him, but she was in love with her too, and she was confused about it. She didn’t want to lose her, but she didn’t want to give up on him either. She, honestly, wanted the both of them in the best of worlds.

Juliette remained sceptical, at first. Was Sarah just trying to cover her tracks and attempt to mend two incompatible worlds? It seemed like so. Yet, when she looked into her girlfriend’s eyes, she saw this classic honesty she had always displayed, even as she spoke about having two crushes at once. The decision was taken: negotiations would have to be held, but it’d be possible. It could be a feasible reality, someway or the other.  The first ray of sunlight beamed through the ash-grey-clouds, revealing a promising corner of blue in the sky.

 

Alas, François didn’t make it easier. He was thick-skulled, that was the first thing Sarah noticed when she started to make her deep interest in him obvious. There was a lot of things going through her mind that scared her about this plan: what if knew about Juliette and her already, which would have deterred him from getting any interested in her? What if he was dating someone already and she didn’t know that? What if this was useless and she was just ruining any chance she had ever had with him? She wasn’t the kind to overthink everything she did or say, so she just continued butting in until a wall would break her skull and horns.

The thoughts eating her up had made it so she was astonished to hear him tell her he was crushing on her, one day, at the café they were having a drink in. She was paying, he had graciously accepted, and this had slipped from his mind, making him blush and try to hide his face away. He was, frankly, adorable to look at while freaking out, but it was no time to watch him decompose in front of her, so she got herself together, shook his shoulders and told him that it was fine, that she liked him too, even if it was complicated.

Perhaps it was because he was a yes man, but he somehow accepted her pact with the devil and entered this strange, unfamiliar three-way relationship where two points of the triangle didn’t connect.

 

For a while, the weather was unstable. It hailed, it shined, it was hot, then cold, changes unpredictable and constant. The dire winter had given stead to an always-shifting spring, where things were slightly better but still needed a lot of tinkering from the three of them. Sarah made a few decisive discoveries during that time: François had no sexual drive nor sexual attraction, making it very difficult to make him enter her already-existing, fairly physical relationship. He, however, didn’t mind Juliette and her just having sexual times together as long as he’d feel included in other activities and times. He was less envious than Juliette, but she was far more prone to express her mind on the topic while François was meeker and too shy to even dare say he may be feeling like the third wheel of the bicycle. Juliette, despite only being into girls, didn’t mind giving her alone time with him to catch up. They all enjoyed drinking coffee together and reading books, going to the movies, playing some casual video games at the arcade on the campus.

It became clear really quickly to Sarah that their relationship could, despite the appearances, work well: Juliette and François got along fine, becoming friends with time, developing a solid platonic bond to the point they shared private jokes and thought of sometimes just spending time as friends. Despite her tendencies to be jealous and demanding, Sarah let them do their thing, as it was obvious they needed to build their own links without their feelings for her interfering. Sex became more of a background thing, at times, as they’d rather spend dates all together doing some perfectly non-sexual activities such as walking down the park, discussing latest reads, talking about classes and imagining what the future held for them.

 

People’s stares continued to target them, even when they expressed the fact every party had consented to it and continued to consent to it. Peer pressure was a terrible thing that tended to affect François the most, yet Juliette and Sarah aggressively rebutted, every time, because it was their business and nobody else’s. Polyamory was still a novelty, at the time, and most people thought she was just a pimp who had somehow gotten one party to think it was only a platonic thing with the other. Sure, it didn’t help that Juliette would never be attracted to François, but that didn’t mean their weird little thing was wrong by any means.

Spring warmed up and stabilized itself. Their friends were understanding, even curious, sometimes wondering if they’d be fine in this kind of relationship. None of them eventually went with it, considering none of them had more than a crush, but being able to explain what was going on with them was always a fine opportunity she’d take. They could finally enjoy the flowers blossoming again without worrying about the hail.

 

Sarah and Juliette graduated college while the three of them were still dating, albeit François immediately pursued his own studies to get a doctorate’s degree. It was fine either way: they now owned a house, the three of them worked as teachers in different cities of the region (but, luckily, never too far away from the place they lived in), they could perfectly afford that. The future had never looked this promising, yet so safe, like the early winds of summer.

They had found their sunlight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what do u mean this is almost exactly like tango à trois


	6. Emerald

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [GREEN - Nature]  
> Like a wildflower, her identity was natural.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God this one is so short, it's not even funny blblbl  
> It's a short little thing because "Nature" really isn't the prompt that's inspired me the most during my lifetime hahaha...  
> But hey, at least it's given some time to shine to Amandine! It's an OC I've recently revamped and I'm really excited to write more about her, including her gardening hobby and her friends!

Amandine had a fascination for wildflowers, stray weeds and whatever grew on its own. She appreciated their uncontrolled beauty: petals wearing the colours they wanted to, leaves with indents and tiny imperfections that gave them their unique and wild charm, bushes of unapologetic tiny plants that were doing whatever they wanted to do. It was a beautiful spectacle to behold, a spectacle she’d be sure to always respect and admire as she walked along the streets, countryside paths and her own garden.

 

Speaking of her garden, she had always hesitated to remove weeds from it. Unless they were directly attacking her roses, or her trees, she didn’t see a reason to remove them: they were in their right to be there, they were natural and that was their place in the wider scope of things. She knew it was hypocritical on her part to tear down some of them if they were negative to her definition of a backyard, yet she also couldn’t let her sometimes years of work on said garden go to waste because of a few rebel weeds.

Nature had ways to balance itself that humans hadn’t mastered, didn’t master, and would never master. Yet, She also had her own flaws: defaults were natural. Ugly, tenacious, threatening weeds were natural. Illnesses affecting her plants were natural. A lot of things had been created by nature’s hand, things with which humans had had to fight to survive and find their own happiness.

 

Wildflowers weren’t perfect. Some of them weren’t even considered to be pretty. But they all were natural, mostly untouched by the human hand. If Amandine gave them so much admiration, perhaps it was because they had the luxury to be content with what they were, never feeling wrong with their own roots or leaves, while she had had the misfortune of having to be touched on by humans to bloom like the deemed-defective moonflower condemned to stay under the moonlight for all of its lifetime.

 

Her identity was natural. That was a thing she had had to overcome to feel right with herself. Just like a moonflower born unable to bloom during night-time, she was born with a defect, even if overcoming it had made her who she was today: a woman, unapologetically so, loving other women.

Her identity was only natural, even if it took man’s hand to unveil what she had truly been since her birth. People happened to be born in the wrong body, sometimes, and had to resort to anthropic ways to solve the issues nature had left behind because She isn’t perfect.

 

Despite the artificial character of her transition process, she couldn’t have felt more at home, more like herself: it was like cultivating a patch of roses where there hadn’t been any. The soil had felt perfect for such a pretty flower to bloom. And, not unlike the moonflower blooming in the daylight, she wasn’t odd: she was just an unusual product of nature, something that was meant to happen, yet didn’t follow most established rules.

Nature and norm weren’t the same thing, that much had cleared itself during her life. It had taken time for her to healthily nurture the idea that she wasn’t what she had first thought herself to be, but that it sometimes happened, that it was natural even if it wasn’t usual. Her parents and friends had accepted her will to unveil herself and change before their very eyes like the plant finally taking on its blossoming form.

 

As a product of nature and humans alike, Amandine was proud of herself, happy to be who she was, and to admire the beautiful flowers of spring.


	7. Turquoise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> [TURQUOISE - Magic/Art]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Raphaëlle is an... interesting character.  
> Like Sarah, she's inspired by a teach at my former high school who I've never actually talked to period (I exchanged like a few words with Sarah's distant inspiration, but saying that I've strived very far away from them would be an understatement), even if I've got to known that teach better because I had friends who had her (and not just friends of friends).   
> Because of that, I've had to mostly craft her from the ground up, taking inspiration here and there. I'd say she's mostly been inspired by my interest in ancient/classical literature and mythology, making her a very calm flow of water compared to the dorming water volcano that is Juliette or Sarah's tempetuous nature. She's a fun character I've severely underexploited, if we exclude 2015's Au Nom des Femmes. It's a shame, really.
> 
>  
> 
> I also promised I'd bring a "calmer" bisexual character to the table, right? Well, here she is: Raphaëlle, asexual biromantic woman with mostly creative urges to write and paint.  
> It's a very short oneshot too because I'm late on schedule and more inspired by fanwork these days, plus the prompt didn't inspired me *this* badly either today, but hey. It's there, I guess.

To Raphaëlle, there was no better way to express oneself than to make all kinds of art. She had, as such, tried herself to many activities: writing, drawing, painting, sculpting, dancing… During high school, she had even tried her hand at cinema by making a short movie with friends about what they were into at the time, which was their love for surrealist literature and authors. While her opinions on Breton and Aragon’s early years may have changed since then, she was still very much a lover of literature and, on the free time her job allowed her, enjoyed writing poems and short stories revolving around what she thought, liked or disliked at one point in time.

 

Like Sapho of Lesbos, Raphaëlle had long expressed her loves through her verses. At first, it was to clear her mind from the confusion inhabiting, even if she had quickly understood she simply loved men and women the same way, if these feelings were anything more than friendship or deep platonic bonds. She had written odes and ballads to her previous loved ones, confession letters she had never dared giving in fear of bothering them, songs to people she’d never see again and short stories where fictional people would find their soulmate and go through trials to win their freedom to be together. In her mind, she was but a normal person expressing herself through artistic methods

Yet, she had also written about how chaste her way to love people had seemed to be to other people. She herself had never quite understood all the fuss about only wanting to share some romantic actions compared to taking it to the seventh sky. Making art of what seemed to be her difference with most of the population had become a pleasure, in a way: it was expressing, describing a trait only a few people had, so she could hope other people understood. Doing so was complicated, perhaps humanly impossible, but trying didn’t cost anything and it made for beautiful prose in her opinion.

 

She was a firm believer that people were more complex than a few traits. Most persons she had known considered her to be mysterious and puzzling, but ultimately harmless and as wise as she looked. Was she mature beyond her years? Perhaps so. It didn’t make her any less of a complex person: knowledgeable and in peace with herself, she felt no fear for the future, didn’t feel like she had a  lot of herself still to discover, but she still enjoyed exploring people’s ideas through conversations and getting to know their mind. This was her inspiration for her art: her life and others’ history, their experiences.

Depicting the human condition was a never-ending well of subjects and words. Raphaëlle herself was way different from her best friend, Sarah, or from her own family. People were different, coming in all colours, personalities, backgrounds and ideas; and that was humanity’s best aspect. Nobody was truly the same, only alike to each other, and differences usually only strengthened bonds or didn’t cause a complete divide amongst the group. Affinities and dislikes were obviously a thing, but a thing that could be turned into something beautiful.

 

Through her pen, her ink, her brushes and her paint, she had vowed to depict the despicable and the admirable, the grotesque and the beautiful, all kinds of life perspectives and possible futures, the past and glorious memories, the overcome of what had once been tragic. Because she was different from most people she knew, she’d draw her perspectives and paint their faces and feelings as seen from the outside.

There only was beauty in people’s differences and their loves. She wrote about love stories that ended well or in consumed breakups, trying to explore the human psyche through her capacity to analyse her own characters, taking a look at all kinds of persons and inspirations as words fell from her pen onto the smooth paper. She was diversity’s aid, its artist, because art was the best way to express identity, singularity and a wish to coexist in peace in one support.

That, to her, was what her main task was, and she was delightful to fill it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think I lack the politicalness required to make this an interesting oneshot.


End file.
